Last Friday, I was in my car driving to physical therapy, so a very nice lady could do really mean things to the foot I broke a few months ago. My phone rang while I was sitting at a light, and I answered it - hands-free, of course. It was my agent.

"If I talk to you," she asked, "will you wreck?"

"Do you want odds?"

"Yes."

"Mmmm...80/20 against."

"Good enough. We're at auction. Two bidders. STAY BY YOUR PHONE."

I barely missed the light pole, a school bus and an old lady on a bike.

An auction in book-speak is when two (or more) publishers want to buy the same book, and they start bidding against each other. It's the sort of thing an author dare not dream. Right up there with "I hope Santa brings me a unicorn." The whole process is sort of like E-Bay except the book in question was mine, and my agent was acting as auctioneer, going back and forth between the two bidders.

It lasted for hours. I was unbearable to be around - nervous and sweaty and pacing and practically peeing down my own leg.

When the whole thing was over, my agent called me with the result. I'm not going to lie to you. I TOTALLY LOST MY SHIT. Years of hoping and working and sweating and writing and rewriting and all of the rest of it. The result is this, which just ran in the done deals section of Publishers Marketplace, an industry news site:

Ashley Ream's RIPENING CLEMENTINE, in which a renowned artist decides to kill herself in 30 days and the ensuing countdown reveals the truth behind why, to Kate Nintzel at William Morrow, at auction, by Barbara Poelle at Irene Goodman Agency (World English).
Foreign: Heather Shapiro at Baror International

Hold onto your hats, guys. Shit is about to get REAL.